Claude Marie Dubuis

Father Dubuis arrived in Texas during the winter of 1847, and was assigned as pastor of Castroville, where many of the residents were German or Alsatian immigrants. There he found a very small church and a crude hut that had been used by a former priest. He immediately set to work learning the Alsatian language. With the help of his assistant, Father Matthew Chazelle, they started building a new house. Dubuis opened a school, teaching some eighty youngsters within the first year. His energy and disposition soon won him the affection of the people.[3]

Church of San Fernando, San Antonio, TX c.1857

That year Father Chazelle died of typhus and Father Emmanuel Domenech was sent to help Father Dubuis. The parish included the villages of D'Hanis, Vandenburg, Quihi, New Braunfels, and Fredericksburg. Dubuis tended his parish on foot or on horseback. On one occasion, he spent a night in a tree above surging floodwaters.[4] Dubuis often had to ride through hostile Comanche territory in order to carry out his duties and was captured four times by Indians. However, Castroville was not attacked; the Indians traded with the settlers, exchanging venison and turkey for sugar and other items. Sometimes they stopped by the church to hear the music.[5] By 1850, the small church was inadequate, and with the help of the men of the parish and Father Domenech, the second church was completed by Easter. This church was used for 20 years and later razed when the third and present church was finished.[3]

In 1850, Bishop Odin sent Dubuis to France for some needed rest and to recruit missionaries. When Dubuis left Castroville for San Antonio he left behind him a firmly established parish of St. Louis, as well as a church building and rectory built mainly by his own hands. He is credited with developing the architectural style distinctive to Castroville, which resembles that of Alsatian structures. Dubuis developed the cemetery and placed a cross on the hill next to the cemetery, following a tradition common in the villages of France. Since then it has been called Cross Hill and was used by the Catholics for more than 100 years for pilgrimages and prayer petitions, such as rogation days, to pray for successful crops of the farmers. The custom was discontinued in the 1950s.[3]

Upon his return from France in 1851, Dubuis was appointed pastor of the Church of San Fernando in San Antonio and vicar general of the Diocese of Galveston. A diverse community, announcements from the pulpit were made in English, French, German, and Spanish. Initially, Dubuis was not sufficiently conversant in Spanish to administer the last rites, and Bishop Odin stayed in San Antonio until a priest who spoke Spanish arrived to assist.[6]

Archbishop Antoine Blanc, Archbishop New Orleans, died on June 20, 1860. On February 15, 1861 Bishop Odin was appointed his successor. Dubuis was one of three individuals Bishop Odin had recommended to succeed him in Galveston, all of whom spoke both English and Spanish, and knew the area. Dubuis went to New Orleans in June 1861 to improve his health, and planned to make a trip to France to recruit more missionaries. However, in April 1961 President Lincoln had ordered a blockade of Southern ports. Not having heard from the Holy See, Bishop Odin decided to go to Europe. In early 1862, Dubuis wrote a Texas colleague that he planned to run the blockade and leave for France in mid-April. Franklin C. Williams, Jr. is of the opinion that as Odin and Dubuis were both French Vincentians from the area of Lyons, that they probably sailed together. Some months later, Dubuis was appointed to succeed Bishop Odin as the second Bishop of the Diocese of Galveston.[7]

Dubuis was consecrated by Odin on November 23, 1862, in Lyons. In May 1863 he entered his episcopal city, where he worked for the next seventeen years.[1] Dubuis saw the diocese through the turmoil of the Civil War, after which he established additional parishes, hospitals and schools.[8] In September 1865, the Sisters of St. Joseph in New Orleans requested Archbishop Odin to send Bishop Dubuis to take confessions, as their usual confessor was unavailable and "Dubuis is so humble that he would come."[9]

1866 saw a rapidly spreading cholera epidemic. Unable to persuade the American religious congregations with trained nurses to establish a presence in Galveston, the bishop wrote to the Sisters of Divine Providence from St. Jean-de-Bassel near Nancy, Alsace, who agreed to come and work in healthcare. During his tenure as bishop he brought almost seventy religious into the state. On one of his trips to Europe, he secured the services of the Congregation of the Resurrection to minister to the Polish community in Texas.[10] He founded the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word.[11] In 1873, at the Bishop's request, the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur in Lockport, New York established the Academy of the Sacred Heart in Waco.[12]

He returned to Castroville as bishop to lay the cornerstone for the third Church of St. Louis. In 1866, Bishop Dubuis made his first episcopal visit, to what would become the Diocese of Corpus Christi, and returned the following year. As early as 1870 Bishop Dubuis, began sending Father Vincent Perrier twice a year to visit Fort Worth.[13] He also attended the First Vatican Council in Rome in 1869-1870. In 1874, the Diocese of Galveston was split when the western half of the State of Texas was established as the Diocese of San Antonio.[8]